That “red line” was an emergency brake on immigration – so that we could call a halt, at least for a time, to the unrelenting increase that we have seen in recent years. It should have been a pretty fundamental component of any renegotiation. But although it was widely trailed that this would form the core of the Government’s renegotiation requirements, all talk of it vanished when David Cameron finally revealed his demands in a speech in November 2014.

At the time there were a number of Tory MPs who expressed their anger. They knew that without such a plan to halt immigration, even for a while, any renegotiation, however well meant, was fundamentally pointless. Now we know for certain that the renegotiation was not even well meant. It was a sham from the start. At the time it was widely reported that the disappearance of the “emergency brake” from the British demands was because Mr Cameron had bowed to German pressure.

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That was vigorously denied – as if that could possibly have happened! But now for the first time an insider has spoken. As a Cabinet minister at the time Iain Duncan Smith is able to recount what happened with total authority. And he has revealed that the allegations of Germany being the final arbiter of what we were allowed to say, or even ask for, were true. As he puts it: “It’s like they were sitting in a room, even when they were not there. There was a spare chair for them – called the German chair.

"They have had a de facto veto over everything.” According to Mr Duncan Smith, at the very last minute David Cameron bowed to Germany’s demand that he dump his long-promised “red line” for an emergency brake to stop any new influx of migrants. In his account, he says that Mr Cameron’s speech on November 27, 2014, in which he set out the UK’s negotiation demands, was to include the emergency brake on immigration as its main feature.

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Mr Duncan Smith claimed that at the very last minute David Cameron bowed to Germany’s demand

The negotiations were a meaningless farce

He says: “I saw the draft. I know that right up until the midnight hour there was a strong line in there about restricting the flow of migrants from the European Union – an emergency brake on overall migration. That was dropped, literally the night before. And it was dropped because the Germans said if that is in the speech we will have to attack it. The whole thing was shown to them. The Germans said from the outset, you are not getting border control. Full stop.”

In other words this confirms what we have long known – that the negotiations were a farce. They were meaningless. They were a charade designed to hoodwink the British people into thinking our relationship with the EU was changing. In reality, all the “renegotiations” confirmed was that nothing had changed. Even before they began, the British Government was dancing to Germany’s tune. All those fine words about fighting for the British national interest and pushing a distinctly British agenda were utter nonsense.

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In reality, all the ‘renegotiations’ confirmed was that nothing had changed

Not that that should surprise anyone – all this has been obvious from the start. And it shows the madness at the heart of the Remain campaign. A few weeks ago Mr Cameron was saying explicitly that if he did not get the changes he was after he was prepared to quit the EU. Those changes, when they were agreed at the Brussels summit in February, amounted to a small technical change to some benefit rules. They were so minor that they have barely even been mentioned since.

And yet the same David Cameron – the man who four months ago threatened to leave if he didn’t get his way over those tiny changes to benefits – now says that if we do vote to leave next month, we open ourselves and Europe up to genocide and another world war. So was he spouting garbage in February? Or is he spouting garbage now? It’s one or the other.

The pros and cons of Brexit

Fri, February 26, 2016

The pros and cons of Brexit.

Because unless he is reckless to the point of madness he couldn’t surely have thought back at the Brussels summit in February that it was worth risking, in his own words, genocide and world war over the possible failure to secure some small changes to the benefit rules. Which simply shows again what a sham the entire “renegotiation” process was. Mr Duncan Smith’s description of how he was told about the German veto is also revealing: “I was driving the car and I got a telephone call to say, ‘we have had to withdraw that’.

The excuse was, ‘oh it is all a bit complicated and difficult and we will come back to it’. But we never did.” Nor would Mr Cameron ever have come back to it because “the only thing that really mattered” was “keeping the Germans on side. They had the ultimate power over it.” British interests were dumped to comply with Mrs Merkel’s instructions. If you doubt any of this, think about the final result of the “renegotiation”.

If it was such a triumph then wouldn’t the Remain camp have made at least some use of it in the campaign? But it has barely mentioned the renegotiation. It’s almost as if it’s ashamed of what emerged. Which, as we have seen, would be with good reason. The longer this campaign goes on the weaker and more desperate Remain shows itself to be. Time to Leave.